I'm an Assistant Professor of Economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, a Research Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute, a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. I'm on Twitter: @artcarden.

Let's Be Blunt: It's Time to End the Drug War

April 20 is the counter-culture “holiday” on which lots and lots of people come together to advocate marijuana legalization (or just get high). Should drugs—especially marijuana—be legal? The answer is “yes.” Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. It’s high time to end prohibition. Even if you aren’t willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at the very least we should legalize marijuana.

For the sake of the argument, let’s go ahead and assume that everything you’ve heard about the dangers of drugs is completely true. That probably means that using drugs is a terrible idea. It doesn’t mean, however, that the drug war is a good idea.

Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences. Literally: it’s an example in the textbook I use in my introductory economics classes (Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles of Economics if you’re curious) and in the most popular introductory economics textbook in the world (by N. Gregory Mankiw).The demand curve for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don’t change their drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices. Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher revenues for drug dealers. In fact, I’ll defer to Cowen and Tabarrok—page 60 of the first edition, if you’re still curious—for a discussion of the basic economic logic:

The more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are drug industry revenues. So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and develop new technologies in drug delivery (like crack cocaine). It’s hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against him or her.

People associate the drug trade with crime and violence; indeed, the newspapers occasionally feature stories about drug kingpins doing horrifying things to underlings and competitors. These aren’t caused by the drugs themselves but from the fact that they are illegal (which means the market is underground) and addictive (which means demanders aren’t very price sensitive).

Those same newspapers will also occasionally feature articles about how this or that major dealer has been taken down or about how this or that quantity of drugs was taken off the streets. Apparently we’re to take from this the idea that we’re going to “win” the war on drugs. Apparently. It’s alleged that this is only a step toward getting “Mister Big,” but even if the government gets “Mister Big,” it’s not going to matter. Apple didn’t disappear after Steve Jobs died. Getting “Mr. Big” won’t win the drug war. As I pointed out almost a year ago, economist and drug policy expert Jeffrey Miron estimates that we would have a lot less violence without a war on drugs.

At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School pointed out the myriad ways in which government promises to make us safer in fact imperil our safety and security. The drug war is an obvious example: in the name of making us safer and protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger. Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear.

Freedom of contract has been abridged in the name of keeping us “safe” from drugs. Private property is less secure because it can be seized if it is implicated in a drug crime (this also flushes the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty” out the window). The drug war has been used as a pretext for clamping down on immigration. Not surprisingly, the drug war has turned some of our neighborhoods into war zones. We are warehousing productive young people in prisons at an alarming rate all in the name of a war that cannot be won.

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane. We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted efforts to wage war on drugs. It’s time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.

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I need to point out that the only real consequence you are arguing about in using drugs, are legal repercussions because it’s illegal. Let’s stop being ignorant, and start talking about Zoloft, Welbutrin, Tobacco, and Alcohol. They are also drugs. Let’s not become hypocritical here. Don’t try to feed me bullshit about prescription being controlled by doctors and pharmacies because you can buy Tobacco and Alcohol at will, and no doctor would ever prescribe either.

The information DARE and the Police distribute is enormously wrong and is obvious propaganda. I am very sorry if you believe all that crap they fed you when you were young, but it is no longer OK for Americans to believe 2+2=5. If you keep turning fact into belief and using that belief to effect political change (or lack thereof) then there is something wrong with you mentally and I urge you to further educate yourself on the truth of the matter or shut the fuck up and stop talking about things you know nothing about.

Screaming about the law isn’t a particularly useful response to what is a very real problem, it’s not that black and white and if you don’t realize that you may need to do some more reading on the subject. Also, you seem to be operating under the assumption that the law is right, no matter what, because it is the law.

Well sadly that isn’t the case, and even if you adopt that absurdly narrow view of what is a global phenomenon it still doesn’t bring you any closer to a solution.

Drug abuse, by definition, carries a social cost. Legalizing drugs is not about endorsing drug abuse, it is about recognizing that the strategy for dealing with it has failed and that it too carries a social cost which given its lack of success is totally unacceptable.

Finally, your concluding remark is a very useful summary of the deeply ignorant mindset from which much of the opposition to ending prohibition is drawn. Self-righteous, moralistic, and utterly devoid of ideas beyond banging your drum like a toddler. If you are ‘sick and tired of hearing about it’, then step aside and let the people who care about the issue find the solutions. Because they won’t come from people like you.

This is one of those comments that is so objectively, hilariously off-the-mark and incorrect that it’s nearly inconceivable that someone could legitimately hold the ideas portrayed in it. As pretty much everyone else replying to it has addressed exactly why, there’s not much to do more than laugh at it, and the person who posted it.

If you actually believe the war on drugs isn’t a complete and total failure please go and read about drug use in America. Look at the rates of drug use since the war on drugs. Look at the violent crime etc. since the war on drugs. Then, I challenge you to look at those exact same rates in countries before and after they decriminalized drug use. For example, the Netherlands.

Also, go look at how much of your tax dollars go to enforcing the war on drugs and the cost of keeping people in prison. Don’t you think that money would be better off going to something worthwhile like education, public works projects etc. ?

Ask yourself, Is it worth it for law enforcement to spend a majority of there time busting harmless stoners while murder cases, rape cases, and others go unsolved? Also, How are alcoholics any different than drug users? Alcohol and drugs are the same thing and should be treated as such. Moderation being the key.

Lastly, I leave you with this:

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”-Thomas Jefferson

The War on Drugs is a failure. Do you even know why pot is illegal? Because of big industries protecting their assets. A more cost effective way of turning hemp into paper, that is what led to pot being demonized by the likes of DuPont and William Randolph Hearst. Hearst owned a vast majority of the printed media and owned hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland, DuPont supplied the chemicals used to convert wood to paper. When hemp threatened their empire they led the charge in the crusade against hemp with propaganda on their side. Simple as that.

Hemp is much easier on the soil and oxygen creating trees need not be destroyed. Not to mention it requires much less pollution of our air and water, speaking of which did you know that the growing of cotton is a chief cause of air pollution? Hemp clothing and paper is so much better for our environment but people have been so brainwashed into believing that pot is a gateway drug that needs to be prohibited at all costs.

The War on Drugs IS a massive failure, not to mention extremely costly, not only in the billions wasted funding the failed program but also in the cost required to house non-violent inmates whose only crime was purchasing or having possession of a completely harmless drug. No one has ever died from smoking pot, and the gateway argument is a total BS fallacy. That is like saying masturbating is a gateway to sex addiction. Of course all sex addicts have masturbated before they became sex addicts, but that does not mean that if you ever masturbate then you are likely to become a necrophiliac.

You are wrong in the assumption that it is wrong because it is illegal. Laws should reflect the majority opinion. Tobacco and alcohol are regulated drugs. One could argue very easily that alcohol is worse than weed. In most current polls about 60 percent of Americans would legalize weed. Since the majority of people would legalize it it should be a law that we could vote on and pass. Regretfully the American political system is corrupt with privatized prisons and corporate sponsorship of politicians. There would be huge money loss from the private prisons who housed Marijuana offenders, because if we legalized it we would also be inclined to let the non-violent weed offenders out of jail. Just because you are fine drinking and smoking doesn’t mean other drugs are bad. I would rather smoke weed than drink any day. We outlawed alcohol for a while in the united states, i don’t know if you know history but it didn’t work out and we had to repeal the law. If alcohol were made illegal tomorrow would you stop drinking? Alcohol is pretty easy to make would you brew your own? I bet you would just like people did during the prohibition. If weed were easier to grow without swift repercussions i would grow it myself. I just have to be patient and hope that the american people will stop electing officials who have been bought by large companies.

Are you serious? People like you are the reason failed polices like this are still in place; you are IGNORING all of the facts presented and just regurgitating the lies that you have been told. Marijuana use is far from dangerous; alcohol related deaths are a huge issue in this country. How often do you hear of anything bad happening from someone smoking a joint?

The people that are in prison for marijuana are WASTING TAX PAYERS MONEY. As well, if it was legalized, it would bring in billions of dollars of tax revenue a year.

Try and look into what is really going on instead of being content with the wool over your eyes; or just go back to watching Fox news.